The State of Social Media Marketing – August 2014 Edition

With the rapidly evolving world of social media, it’s easy to feel like your head is spinning just to keep track of all the new features that are always coming into the mix. LinkedIn has grown immensely in the past 18 months, Facebook seems to go through a complete shift once a year and Twitter had some big changes we saw earlier this year.

In May we began a new segment on our blog called The State of Social Media Marketing that is intended to encapsulate the most significant changes you should be aware of in the industry.

LinkedIn Is Changing Their Search Algorithm

Although we are still getting the full details on this development, one thing is certain: LinkedIn is making big changes to their search algorithm. One career expert wrote about some changes she noticed happening back in April and we’ve also been noticing big differences in how various terms are ranking individuals but have yet to determine exactly what is going on. We will keep you posted!

LinkedIn Debuts Job Search App For iPhone

We spend a lot of time talking about how to find clients on LinkedIn but the fact is that there is a whole other side to it that is powerful for finding a career as well. The new LinkedIn Job Search app for iPhone let’s you stay on top of the latest career postings to LinkedIn while on the go. Since more than 40% of job seekers are already using mobile to look at jobs on LinkedIn, it makes perfect sense to create a new app tailored to that experience.

LinkedIn & Newsle Merge

Newsle is a fantastic tool to help you better engage with the influencers in your personal network. I was so excited when I first learned about it that I raved about Newsle in our weekly newsletter.

When you go on to LinkedIn, you’ll see a lot of stories in your Home feed that have been shared by people in your network. Newsle lets you see the stories being shared ABOUT people in your network instead. Let that sink in for a moment. This was a brilliant acquisition for LinkedIn and will prove to be a powerful tool for anyone that makes use of it.

LinkedIn Adds A Cover Photo

When talking about the social media changes that were more recent back in May, Twitter rocked the world after shifting to a more Facebook-like appearance and now it appears that LinkedIn has followed suit. Currently it’s only available to LinkedIn Premium members but it will be rolling out to the rest of users in the coming months.

I have to say that I’m a fan of the look, what do you think? Take a look at my profile here showing you new cover photo.

Introducing LinkedIn’s “How You Rank” Tool

This is one of my favorite recent social media changes as I’ve always been a fan of the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature on LinkedIn. The new “How You Rank” tool shows you how you compare to others in your network, in terms of profile views. Take a look at the top ranking profiles and try to discern what they’re doing that’s working better than your strategy and adjust accordingly.

Introducing “Save” on Facebook

Have you ever seen a Facebook post so good that you wish you could save it easily to return to later? Facebook has recently implemented a feature that lets you do exactly that on iPhone, Android and over the web.

Facebook software engineer Daniel Giambalvo revealed of the company’s blog that, “You can save items like links, places, movies, TV and music. You’ll be able to access your saved items in the “More” tab on mobile or by clicking the link on the left hand side of Facebook on the web.”

Facebook Adjusts Their Privacy Settings

I don’t know about you but when I hear “Facebook privacy settings” and “social media changes” in the same blog, I get scared. I think you’ll actually approve of this change, although perhaps too little, too late.

After exhaustive public outcry, Facebook has changed the default audience for new members to “Friends only”. Previously you would automatically share every post publicly until you specified otherwise and there were a lot of people that had to learn that the hard way.

Facebook will also have periodic privacy setting checkups to remind you of your settings and to re-confirm in an effort to reduce posting to the wrong audience. Do you think Facebook is doing a good job with protecting user privacy? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook Adjusts Algorithm For Videos

The engineers at Facebook have tweaked how videos are showing up in the News Feed so that those who watch more videos will now start seeing more videos popping up. That’s being incorporated into the factors they previously incorporated such as likes, comments and shares.

This only affects videos directly uploaded to Facebook as they already use a number of similar metrics to rank links from other sites. This means that videos people watch will get more News Feed exposure and a larger reach than videos people are ignoring. Nothing surprising here but good to know!

Facebook Gives More Control Over The Ads You See

One of the greatest advantages of Facebook for advertisers is finely you can target your audience to make sure the right people see your ads. On the flip side, people exposed to advertising are annoyed by ads unless they are legitimately relevant to their interests. Here’s what the Facebook official blog had to say about the change:

“People also tell us they want more control over the ads they see. That’s why we’re introducing ad preferences, a new tool accessible from every ad on Facebook that explains why you’re seeing a specific ad and lets you add and remove interests that we use to show you ads. So if you’re not interested in electronics, you can remove electronics from your ad interests.”

Pinterest Starts Testing Promoted Pins

We knew it had to come eventually. Pinterest announced back in fall of 2013 that they were going to start experimenting with promoted pins on the site but now they are finally working with a select group of brands in the US to roll out an official program.

Pinterest Guided Search Debuts On The Web

Back in May we talked about how Pinterest was launching an exciting new feature called “guided search” that allows you to find interesting and relevant pins more easily. They’ve also made it easier to filter your searches by pins, boards or from other Pinners.

Social Media Changes: You Can Now Follow Topics On Pinterest

Each of the categories on Pinterest now have additional specialized interests within them that you can follow and surf. This will bring pins from other people who have those common interests into your home feed.